


end in fire

by venndaai



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie, The Broken Earth Trilogy- NK Jemisin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Apocalypse, Cannibalism, Other, i am not a geologist, rock magic nonsense, some fucked up shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 02:25:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8648185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: Fusion with NK Jemisin's Broken Earth series, because I guess I love writing stuff that will only appeal to like five other people. Anyway Breq is a Guardian and kills a lot of people, the world is ending, everyone has rock names and Sphene is a cannibal.





	1. Chapter 1

1

_Breq, turning_

 

The body lies naked and face down, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around it. It's minus fifteen degrees here, in this antarctic comm. A storm passed just hours before. The snow stretches smooth in the wan sunrise, only a few tracks leading into a nearby ice-block building. A tavern. Or what passes for a tavern in this comm.

  
There's something itchingly familiar about that out thrown arm, the line from shoulder down to hip. But it's impossible for you to know this person. (This orogene- you can feel that they are one.) You've never been here before. A possibility occurs to you- the Antarctic Fulcrum- it is perhaps just on the edge of possibility that someone you once knew was transferred there, and somehow ended up here, hundreds of miles from the Fulcrum, naked in the snow. It strikes you as highly unlikely. But not impossible.

  
If they are someone you know, you'll probably have to kill them. You should leave them here. But you're curious now. And they'll die anyway. They've been beaten. No one in that tavern is going to rescue them.

  
You use one booted foot to lift the naked shoulder so you can see the person's face. I can't know for sure why you do this. I can only guess. Is it only curiosity? Is it the pain in your sessapinae, the hunger you have gone so long without sating, the possibility that this person is one of the few who could ease that ache? Or is it something else?

  
You lift her shoulder, and see her face, and know her. The Fulcrum named her Sphalerite, and a long, long time ago, she was one of your charges. You thought her centuries dead, but here she is. If you were someone else, you might utter an oath. "Evil Earth," perhaps. But you're you, and you stay silent. You crouch down and feel for a pulse, for the faintest stir of breath.

  
Still alive.

  
Sphalerite isn't any concern of yours anymore, isn't your responsibility. You can leave her here to die. She was never one of your favorites.

  
You rise and go into the tavern. The place is dark, the white of the ice walls long covered over with grime or worse. The air smells of alcohol and vomit, which doesn't bother you. A barkeep stands behind a high bench. She's a native Arctic all right—fat, pale and wide-eyed. Three patrons sprawl in seats at a dirty table. They pretend not to see you, though they certainly noticed you in the street, and know why you are in this tavern. At least one of them left Sphalerite out there. Probably all of them. She hasn't been out there long, or she’d be dead. What you don't understand is why she's still alive, when they aren't dead.

  
“I'm going to bring her inside," you say. A statement of fact.

  
Behind you one of the patrons spits, and hisses, "Filthy rogga."

  
So your guess was right. They beat Sphalerite because somehow, they realized what she was. But didn't have the stomach to outright kill her. Just left her to die.

  
You turn to look at her, to study her face. Tall, fat, pale. Looks strong and healthy. None of the people here will look so healthy in a few months. They don't know this yet. They haven't recognized the beginning of the Season.

  
"I'm not a rogga," you say, pleasantly.

  
"Then you're a rogga lover," the person says.

  
You turn towards the door again. "I'm bringing her in," you repeat.

  
The one nearest to you stands up.

  
It takes you two minutes to kill them all. After, you lean against the doorframe, momentarily dizzy with the brief reprieve from the pain you always live with. They didn't have much, being stills, but even a tiny bit helps.

  
But you only stand there a moment. Then you break a table to make a board, take it outside, and roll Sphalerite onto it as carefully as you can. Drag her inside. It isn't that hard for you. You're a lot stronger than you look. Inside, you move the bodies away from the fireplace, and stoke it up, putting Sphalerite a safe distance away. You clean her face and hands with lukewarm water.

  
You can't stay here. The storm is over. Someone from the comm proper may come in at any minute. But you don't want to drag Sphalerite through the snow, either.

  
You strip some of the bodies of their warm clothes, manage to mostly put them on Sphalerite. She doesn't wake. You're going to have to carry her after all. If she has internal injuries, she will probably die. Too bad. You're not going to kill this whole comm. Not for her.

  
You find a horse out back. Small, sturdy, very shaggy. So you don't have to carry her. You tie her to the horse like a sack of grain. The horse is nervous- animals never like your kind- but you pet its nose and sing to it, and it calms. You fill its saddlebags with food from the tavern. A Season has started, and nothing should be wasted.

  
Then you lead the horse out. Along the road. Off road, your tracks in the snow would be very easy to follow. On the road there are at least a few other tracks of people and horses, and likely to be more as the hours pass.

  
Three hours out of the comm, snow begins to fall. Sphalerite is still breathing. She wasn't so badly injured, then.

  
Eight hours out, she stirs, struggles for a moment against the ropes, and then falls still again.

  
You stop, untie her, set her down on the ground. She sways, but doesn't fall over. Her face is very swollen. She stares vacantly. Responds to your questions with "Yes," "No," or "I don't know."

  
She's taken something, some substance. Most drugs make orogenes more unstable, more dangerous. But some opioids can make them placid. Nothing can silence Father Earth's calls, but drugs can make an orogene not care if she hears them. Can make her not care if a shake comes straight at her and kills her.

  
That explains why she didn't kill the people in the bar. But they found out what she was anyway. The drug didn't protect her from that.

  
You lead her with one hand and the horse with the other. Both follow. Another half hour down the road is a way station. Amazingly, it seems empty. You suppose trade doesn't really start up here until farther into the summer. It's not much more than four stone walls and a wooden roof. You lead the horse inside. The two of you will need its heat.

  
Sphalerite slumps in a corner. You sit in front of her, and look at her. You reach out. Curl your hand around the back of her neck.

  
Her eyes fly wide open, and she looks at you, really looks at you. "Oh, fuck," she whispers, and you see the fear and panic struggling to break through her high.

  
Fulcrum-born, of eight-ringer parents. She'd believed what the Fulcrum taught her. Always obeyed orders, never questioned. A good, model orogene. When you last saw her, she had worn seven rings on her fingers, thick, heavy circles of polished stone and crystal. That was five hundred and nine years ago. You didn't felt all that sad when you heard of her loss. How awful of you. But she was never one of your favorites.

  
You shouldn't have had favorites. Should have loved all your charges equally. That was what you were taught. Many of your fellow Guardians were unfaithful to that mandate. Saw their charges as burdens, or even prey. Did not love their duties. You didn't, either, most of the time, but you never hated any of them. You just didn't love them. Except your favorites. The special, precious ones. Sphalerite was never one of them.

  
She closes her eyes again. You sing, softly. You offer her some of the food you took from the tavern. She eats it.

  
Why this meeting here, now, at the start of a Season, the last and final Season, now, when your purpose has finally become clear to you? She is a complication. You should leave her. But you won't, will you? That's not who you are. You've tried to leave yourself behind. But it follows. It always follows.

  
Breq. Born of my enemies. But soon, very soon now, to be turned to my purpose. To become one of my weapons, in the final battle of this war. I am watching you. I am always watching you.


	2. Chapter 2

2

_Sphene, running_

 

Sphene runs the day they kill Mica, which is what saves her life, because she's a hundred miles from Yumenes and still running when the Rift opens. Still it nearly gets her. That'll teach her to pay more attention. She doesn't have time to divert the shake cleanly, just slams all that energy around her, ripping the ground open and setting everything around her on fire, so then she has to ice the fire, and then all that energy has to go somewhere so she makes a new very small mountain. At least she doesn't have to worry about any stills noticing. All the ones within the range of her awareness are extremely dead.

  
She knows what it means. Yumenes is dead. The Fulcrum is dead. A Season has started, worse than any she's ever heard of. Maybe bad enough to wipe humanity from the face of Father Earth for good. She has to suppress a scream of happiness. Then she realizes she doesn't have to suppress anything any more. So she screams, until her voice goes hoarse. The giddy exultation stays with her.

  
She eats dead animals, for a while, dead plants too. She gets sick a few times, which is very unpleasant, but she survives, and gets far enough from the Rift that there are live animals she can ice and eat. Usually she remembers to thaw and cook the flesh. Sometimes she's too hungry to think so she just eats the meat raw.

  
Further on there are living stills. She avoids the comms; their gates are barred anyway. She makes an effort to avoid the commless, but some of them find her anyway. She doesn't go hungry, then.

  
You never knew this one. She wasn't one of your charges, and you abandoned your post before she earned her first ring. A shame; you might have liked her, for all that she wasn't your type- was never hapless, never vulnerable, even as a child. Was always cold and calculating, but you might have respected that. You certainly would have respected the way her coldness turned to rage.

  
After a while she will stop feeling quite so happy about the death of the Fulcrum, because now she can't strangle any of them. She can kill the odd still she runs across- and oh, she will- but it won't satisfy the hunger entirely. She will begin to suspect that nothing will ever truly satisfy it.

  
But she is still happy enough the night she hides in a cave from the acid rain and a voice behind her says- chirps, really- "Are you a human?"

  
Sphene turns, torus spinning, and ices the figure behind her without conscious thought, because whoever they are, they aren't Mica, and so the world won't miss them. She isn't perfect at everything, but she knows she is very, very good at killing things, and she hits her target squarely, grabbing all the heat from the air- there isn't as much of it as she was expecting, but there's no time to ponder that, only time to grab and push, releasing her stolen energy as a raised ridge around the frozen figure. There's a moment of stillness, and then the figure gives itself a shake, ice cracking and falling off, and Sphene sees marble white skin, veined through with black, and black stone eyes. The stone eater says, "Ooh, that was interesting," and it looks at her, head cocked. "Can you do it again?" It steps over her small rock ridge, crunching it under a heavy white foot.

  
Sphene backs away, but it's got her cornered. She can't run without turning her back on it.

  
"Are you human?" the stone eater asks again.

  
Sphene hasn't used her voice for anything but screaming since Mica stepped between her and the Guardian. It takes her a minute to remember how to speak. The stone eater waits, head still cocked, frozen like a statue. Which is what they're often called in the lore, right? Living statues?

  
"That," Sphene manages at last, voice croaking, "is a matter of some debate."

  
"You're not one of us, though," the stone eater says.

  
Sphene shakes her head. "Definitely not," she says.

  
The stone eater smiles, and Sphene expects its face to crack in changing expression, but it doesn't, just sort of _grinds_ into place. It holds out its hand. "I'm Zeiat," it says. "At least, they told me I was. And I suppose they'd know. Better than me, anyway. They say they knew me back _before_ , but I'm not sure I believe that. So I came here. Humans are more interesting."

  
Sphene knows she should be running. She also knows that running will be ultimately futile. And also she knows that she is tired of running. Just once she wants to be brave and stupid, like Mica. So she puts out her hand, and lays it on top of the stone eater's.

  
Something starts, with that touch. Sphene feels it, but she can't put a name to it, not yet. They taught her so little, in the Fulcrum. She'll have to teach herself now, and fast, if she is to survive. For now she sits down on a flat rock, and the stone eater- Zeiat- sits down next to her, and they watch the acid rain together companionably. Later she teaches Zeiat counters using pebbles and circles scratched into the flat rock. Zeiat won't stop eating the counters. Sphene doesn't really care. She hasn't talked to anyone in months, and maybe a stone eater doesn't really count as anyone, but it's person enough for Sphene. Not a still, not a Guardian, not a rogga. Perfect. Someone Sphene has no reason to hate. Someone she can talk to without spitting.

  
In the morning the ground doesn't eat through Sphene's worn down shoes. Zeiat doesn't seem bothered at all by any remaining acidity. Just follows Sphene idly down the slope. Scrambling down, hearing Zeiat behind her, Sphene suddenly knows that this meeting wasn't an accident. That Zeiat knew who she was before they met. Maybe not her name, but something about her. She doesn't know how she knows this. It doesn't upset her. She's still hungry, but at least now she's distracted a little.

  
Halfway through the day Zeiat stops. Sphene turns int time to see her sink into the ground and disappear, with only a small circle of upturned earth to mark her wake. Sphene stands there for a while, and then makes herself keep walking. Three hours later she walks around a hill and there's a figure on the road ahead of her. As she approaches she can see it is unnaturally tall and shining even under an ash-dark sky. When she gets close Zeiat hands her a basket full of food. Fish, to be specific. Where did the stone eater get fish? They're nowhere near the ocean. She doesn't care. She makes a fire right then and there, forces herself to cook the fish slowly until the white flesh is tender. She offers some to the stone eater, who to her surprise accepts, crunching half a fish with its shining white teeth along with a mouthful of gravel.

  
A week later the smallest finger on Sphene's left hand has turned completely to granite. She breaks it off with her right hand and passes it to Zeiat, who swallows it whole. It's only fair they help with each other's hunger.

  
The two of them are not as dangerous as you. Not yet. But they bear watching. If nothing else, their journey should be entertaining.

 


	3. Chapter 3

3

_Seivarden, out of the cold and into the fire_

 

The first thing that registers clearly, when she becomes conscious, is that she's warm, which is unexpected. The second is that she's lying on something soft, and she's wearing clean clothing. She's content to exist in this peaceful state of awareness for a few more long blissful moments, and then she realizes a third, less pleasant thing, which is: she is sober. Horribly so. The world around her is louder than it has been in years.

She's lying on some kind of couch, and there's a bucket by her head, so she throws up into that, and while her body's retching she tries to remember what's happened to her. She remembers staying far too long in that tavern, ignoring the hostile looks because she was so desperate for kef, but somehow, somehow they knew, or suspected, what she was. Maybe she lost control, was careless in her desperation and gave it away somehow. Doesn't matter. They beat her, but since she's still alive that must mean they didn't have the stomach to kill her outright. And after that... She has only scattered images in her head, and none of them make the slightest sense. She discards them. She's used to distrusting her own memories.

She's done vomiting. She wipes her mouth on the back of her strangely clean, unfamiliar sleeve. From the look of her vomit, she's eaten recently, which is also odd.

She lifts her head. She's in a warm, large dwelling, with solid stone walls, lit by electricity, which she hasn't seen since she passed the antarctic line.

There's a creak of a door opening behind her, a sharp gust of freezing air, and she turns and freezes, half on the couch and half on the floor, because coming in through the doorway is Breq. And _oh_ , at least part of her memories were real then. But- it doesn't make sense, because- how is she still alive? And what the _fuck_ , the Guardians must live much longer than she'd even guessed at.

Breq's black eyes look at her and then slide past her, face as expressionless as ever. She's wearing a heavy winter coat, and good boots, and she's carrying an armful of logs. Sph- _Seivarden_ watches, still frozen, as she passes her, goes to the big stone hearth on the other side of the room and places her heavy load down, gets to work stoking up the embers of a fire- which can't be the main source of heat, or Seivarden would be frozen now. She's singing, voice as harsh and unlovely as Seivarden remembers.

Seivarden is frightened, far more frightened than she thought she would be, and that makes her panic, but it also makes her angry, and she clings to that. Anger is dangerous, but not nearly so dangerous as panic. She works her jaw a little before she manages to speak. "Where the rust are we?"

Breq doesn't answer. She's done with her song, and has switched to humming, which at least is easier on Seivarden's throbbing head. She's done with the fire, too, and she stands up, walks over to Seivarden so she can take the bucket full of sick. Seivarden gets a better look at her as she comes close. She's older, of course, and much more scarred, but age lies strangely on Guardians. Seivarden wonders how many others have passed through Breq's care since her.

She never smiled. Seivarden remembered that. She was the only one who never smiled, not even when she was hurting you.

"I need kef," Seivarden says. She intends for it to sound authoritative but instead it comes out whiny.

"No, you don't," Breq says.

"I do," Seivarden insists, and then shrinks a little. But Breq doesn't hurt her, just looks at her and says,

"Try to reach the earth now."

She doesn't want to. But Guardians are to be obeyed, and so, obediently, she reaches. There's nothing but a buzz in her teeth. She glares at Breq. "You can't block me all the time."

"No," she says. "Once you're past the withdrawal, if you still can't control yourself, I'll kill you."

It doesn't sound meant as a reassurance, which Seivarden is glad for.

"Fuck you," she wants to say, but doesn't, because even though Breq clearly wants her alive for now, for some terrible purpose, there's still a lot of pain Seivarden can at least try to avoid before the end.

Breq's going to make her a node maintainer. Or bring her back to the Fulcrum and lock her up somewhere for breeding. Or maybe make an example of her, so the grits know never to run. None of those quite make sense, there's something off, but she can't think straight when she's shaking and the rusting Earth is so goddamn loud. She grabs the bucket back from Breq, throws up again. Breq holds back her hair, but doesn't touch her neck, her sessapinae. Thank fuck.

She falls asleep for a while, or at least, there's a space that is blank, and then there's a vague sense that it's darker, night time, though the lights are still on, and the building is windowless and weather-proofed so thoroughly that it's hard to tell. Breq is on the floor, playing some kind of stringed instrument. Seivarden finds her eyes are avoiding Breq's hands, and feels a surge of anger at both of them. She wants to scream, "Stop that horrible noise," but of course she doesn't. Wouldn't have dared, even when she was a highly respected seven-ringer, with a place for herself in the world. Before the obelisk ruined everything.

 

 

 

Neither of them leave the house for a week. Of course, Seivarden can barely stand, and Breq can't get more than a couple meters from her, or she won't be able to suppress her orogeny any more. The effort must be exhausting her, but she doesn't show it, and she still doesn't smile. Just sings softly in her horrible voice, or hums.

There are more blank spaces, that might be sleep, but that don't really feel like it. After a while Seivarden manages to keep food down, and keep herself hydrated without Breq pouring lukewarm water down her throat. Breq cleans up after her patiently and silently. Seivarden doesn't mouth off to her, but she never thanks her, either. She cries a lot. Breq can keep Seivarden from speaking to the earth, but she can't keep the earth from whispering at Seivarden. It hurts, but worse than that, it scares the rusting shit out of her. And panic makes her throw up, and keeps her shuddering suddenly awake, and everything is already so loud and bright and harsh. She doesn't know what's the withdrawal, what's the return of her orogeny, and what's the unrelenting fear.

She won't remember much of this later, which is a blessing.

When she's strong enough to walk, she waits until Breq seems to be asleep, then stands up, opens the heavy wooden door, finds a narrow short hallway beyond it and then another heavy door, opens that, and is faced with a dark black void of night, white snow vanishing into nothingness, a few flakes drifting past in the bone-freezing wind. She knows Breq probably isn't actually asleep, but still, she puts on the clothes and coat that are by the door, and trudges out into darkness, stomping the snow down in a circle before she finds the stable, and the horse. It isn't hobbled. She stands in the close darkness of the stable, staring at nothing, for several minutes. Then she trudges back to the house. Where, after all, could she go, in such a harsh night? If she could escape, how long before you found her again? (She thinks you have been tracking her all this time. She is rather self centered in that way.) And, doubtless most important in her mind, could she manage to control her orogeny long enough to find more of her drug? Breq, you let her go because you knew she would return. More cruel, in some ways, than chaining her. You're not a cruel person, but your methods can be.

When she returns to the house she finds her former Guardian- does Breq count as her _former_ Guardian?- sitting on a bench holding the stringed instrument. She stares, unable to conceal her surprise, still shrugging slightly, uncomfortable in the heavy coat, itchy.

“I want to leave,” she says, trying to summon up the old commanding arrogance she used to use on her juniors in the Fulcrum, and the stills, when she was on circuit.

“We’ll leave when I’m ready," Breq says, and fingers a few notes on the instrument. “Tell me, Sphalerite, why are you here?"

She crosses her arms. "I don't rusting know. I don't remember how you found me. And it's not Sphalerite. It's Seivarden." She rolls her eyes. "You think I spent five years walking around using a Fulcrum name?"

"You're here," Seivarden's Guardian, _Sphalerite's_ Guardian, says, and she _is_ still her Guardian, even after all this time, even in this nowhere place, "because you chose to run."

Seivarden opens her mouth to speak, draws breath, then blows it out, sharp and shaky. She turns her back, ostensibly to remove her outer coat and drop it on a nearby bench. It's hard to make herself turn her back, but it's not like either of them rely much on line of sight. “You don’t know anything about decisions I have or haven’t made,” she spits. "You weren't fucking there."

No answer to that, which is good, because she doesn't know how she would react to one. Instead, “Did you start taking kef before or after you left the Fulcrum?” And that's a _stupid_ question. Sure, everyone knows there's some level of smuggling happening inside the Fulcrum walls. But an addiction? That would never be tolerated.

Seivarden slumps down onto the bench beside where she’s sloppily left her coat. “I want tea.”

“There’s no tea here.” She can hear Breq set the instrument aside. “There’s milk."

“What sort of place doesn’t have tea?” Seivarden demands, but leans forward, elbows on her knees, and puts her forehead on top of her wrists, not on her knuckles, still avoiding pressing hard stone rings into her forehead, even though she hasn't worn any in half a decade.

“This sort of place,” Breq answers, flat, toneless. Not humming at the moment. “Why were you taking kef?”

"You know, you rusting bastard." Tears are dripping onto Seivarden's lap. She's too tired to care about rudeness, and surely if Breq were going to break her bones, she would have done it by now, for trying to run again.

“To try and kill your brain so you couldn't use your orogeny." Seivarden can hear her start to pick out another tune on the instrument.

Seivarden cries for a while, and then she says, "Not kill. Disconnect. She told me it would remove my emotions. There'd be no risk of me getting angry and accidentally icing someone." She doesn't know why she's explaining herself to Breq, except that maybe it's because there's been no one else to explain herself to, for years and years.

“The kef would?” Seivarden doesn't answer. "Did it work?"

"Yes," Seivarden shouts. "Yes, it was working rusting fine before you showed up and ruined it."

"And yet I found you beaten and naked in the snow."

Seivarden doesn't answer that. But after a few more moments she finds herself lifting her face from her wrists and saying, "She didn't know I was a r- an orogene. Thought I just wanted to get high. She said that emotions clouded perception. That the clearest sight was pure reason, undistorted by feeling.”

“That’s not true." Breq does something complicated with the instrument, but Seivarden's not knowledgeable enough to say what it is. She was never that interested in music, and Breq's love of it made it mildly hateful to her.

“It seemed true at first. It was wonderful at first. It all went away. I could still sess things, but I didn't care about it. I didn't care about- anything. But then it would wear off, and things would be the same. Only worse. And then after a while it was like not feeling felt bad. I don’t know. I can’t describe it. But if I took more that went away.”

“And coming down got less and less endurable.”

“Oh, rusting Earth,” Seivarden moans. “I want to die.”

“Why don’t you?” Breq says, and changes to another song Seivarden doesn't know.

Seivarden looks at her, for the first time feeling more puzzlement than fear. "Why haven't you killed me?" she asks.

“Go to sleep,” Breq says, and lays her fingers across the strings, silencing them. "In the morning you can tell me how you survived Garsedd, and what you are doing five hundred years later and thousands of miles away."

“I want to leave,” Seivarden protests, not moving, still slumped on the couch, elbows on her knees. “Why can’t I leave?”

“I have business here,” Breq says, which tells her exactly nothing. “Go back to bed.” Bed is the couch. Seivarden gives Breq one last look, hoping it carries her contempt, and then lies down, throwing a blanket over herself. She desperately tries to think of some way to leave, to overpower Breq- reasoning, she knows, will not be an option. Anything she comes up with seems stupid.

 

 

At some point in the night, a stranger enters the house. Seivarden hears them come in from her place on the couch, and squeezes her eyes shut tighter, tries to keep her breaths deep as though she's still asleep. She tries to sess where exactly the intruder is, but Breq is still a harsh buzz of interference, so she's still awake and blocking Seivarden. Seivarden doesn't know if she should be hoping the intruder kills Breq or Breq kills the intruder. One outcome is vastly more likely than the other.

Small noises, in the space between the couch and the pallet where Breq lies. Then a voice, saying in Sanzed, "Relative?" Then Breq, answering in another language, that Seivarden doesn't know, can't understand.

They talk for a while. Seivarden hears her own name- her Still name, thank fuck. She also catches the words _Sanzed_ , and _Yumenes_. She stays still until she hears Breq say, “Sit up, Seivarden," in Sanzed. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

Then Seivarden says, “Fuck off,” and pulls a blanket over her head. Then shoves it off again and rises, slightly shaky, and goes into the privy and closes the door.

She crouches in there, still shaking, listening to them talk. Manages to stand up, use the privy, wash her hands and face. Comes noisily out and sinks back onto the couch, hands trembling, breathing quick and shallow. It's her sessapinae. It's her fear. It's not having any rusting kef.

Breq says something to the stranger, who shakes her head, frustrated or exasperated, and goes into a side room. Returns, approaches Seivarden, leans over, and reaches for her.

Seivarden starts, shoving herself up and back, and tries to ice her. Finds, in a moment of confused horror, that she could. That Breq's control has lifted. But Seivarden isn't what she once was, and her grab for the heat in the stranger's body dissipates into nothing. There's nothing but a small chill in the air. The stranger notices, though, face shifting into a hard frown. When she speaks, Seivarden hears the word she's been expecting. _Rogga_.

Still neither of them kill her. “Let go of Father Earth, Seivarden, and lie down," Breq tells her, sharply. Seivarden stares at the unfrozen stranger, but she isn't capable of much thought right now, and Guardians are to be obeyed. She lies down.

  
Small sounds, a sense of movement, and Breq is above her. Breq's hand is reaching down, curving around her neck, and this is it, this is when she dies. But Breq doesn't crush her skull. Just strokes the skin above her sessapinae. The buzzing energies of orogeny drain out of Seivarden's body. A few moments later, she's asleep.

 


	4. Chapter 4

4

_Sphene, in between_

 

It's more vital than ever to avoid comms and other travelers now that Sphene's got a stone eater companion who is making no effort to conceal her nature. Sphene doesn't know how other people would react to Zeiat; she doesn't plan on finding out. Part of her hopes a lone raider or two will track them and attack them. She wants to kill and consume. But it doesn't happen. They stay away from the roads, and just head south, away from the equator, away from the Rift. Sphene doesn't know why she's still running. Maybe just to get as far from Yumenes as possible, even though it doesn't exist any more. Maybe she's just running from her memories.

Zeiat is fascinated by everything. Birds, frogs (those mostly dead, they're always the first to go during a Season), trees, Sphene's hair and the remains of her clothing. Different kinds of rocks, in particular: she has Sphene name each and every one they come across. At night, around the fires Sphene starts without flint or kindling, she gets Sphene to tell her a bit about the Sanzed empire (just another dead civ now, Sphene thinks happily.) Sphene tells her a bit. Nothing about the Fulcrum, nothing about rogga. But she talks about comms, provinces, castes. Zeiat just will not shut up with her questions. When Sphene gets tired of answering she just lies down and shuts her eyes, and Zeiat doesn't bother her then. Just goes still as the statue she resembles, black eyes fixed on nothing.

She disappears often. Does that creepy sinking into the ground trick. When she returns, she doesn't say where she went, and when Sphene asks, she acts as though she doesn't remember disappearing at all.

Sphene still has to drink from rivers, and still regularly gets sick, but she hasn't died yet. The second time she gets sick, Zeiat disappears and reappears with bottles of water, which helps for a bit. Still. At some point none of the streams will be drinkable any more and she'll have to risk stopping at the waystations.

Then Zeiat disappears and doesn't return.

Sphene keeps moving, but she's waiting, too, always looking for a tall glittering figure around each bend in the road. For the first few days she pretends she isn't. On the third day she starts to curse herself, because she'd meant not to care about anyone or anything ever again.

Mica was her senior, though she was actually a year or two younger than Sphene, but much more skilled and (the Fulcrum thought) controllable. Fulcrum-born, unlike Sphene. They'd gone on an assignment together. Sphene had suspected an attempt at breeding- she always thought the Fulcrum wanted her power level without her attitude, and a kid would be one way to do that, and was it paranoia when they really were out to get you?- but Mica had never said anything about it, so either Sphene really was just paranoid or Mica had pulled some strings somewhere. She could have done it, probably, she was a lot more respected than Sphene, she was an eight ringer and part of a group of seniors who the Fulcrum authorities sometimes listened to. Anyway, they'd been on an assignment, and it had gone to shit, which was the sort of thing that bound people together, when you saved each other's lives a few times and screamed at each other about the FUCKING Fulcrum not giving its agents _very relevant information_ about a fucking _active volcano_ \- and then afterwards there'd been that adrenaline rush from surviving something you probably shouldn't have and one thing had lead to another as they tended to do.

Then on the way back Sphene insisted on stopping by a node station. Mica tried to dissuade her but Sphene needed to see. To know. So they went, making up some bullshit about an inspection, and Sphene had seen, and the guards had taunted them about it and called them rogga, and Sphene managed to stay blank as stone until that night when she broke down screaming because she was crazy and that was what was going to happen to her and Mica just held her and said, tersely but with intense conviction: "I won't let that happen."

No one ever loved Sphene. Her Guardian pretended to but it was obvious to Sphene that she didn't. Her mother knew she was crazy long before she knew she was a rogga, and she didn't even try to love her.

But Mica did. Sphene never understood why.

Two years later Sphene found out shit she shouldn't have and the Guardians caught her. Her Guardian and another one. Her Guardian was the one who broke her hand again. The other one was the one who brought out the damp cloth and moved towards her and that was when Sphene started kicking and biting the guard holding her arms because they weren't going to kill her they were going to knock her out and send her to a node.

But they didn't because Mica got in the way and Sphene's Guardian-

She-

Mica-

 

Sphene's Guardian couldn't have done that to Zeiat. Nothing Sphene knows of can harm a stone eater. So Sphene thought it was safe to start enjoying the company, start finding her amusing, start admiring her granite-flecked skin. She didn't think she'd be hurt by so simple a thing as Zeiat leaving on her own. Presumably because she got bored.

That's when reality really hits Sphene: she is alone, everyone she has ever known is dead, the world is dying, and nothing she ever does for the rest of however long her life is going to be will mean anything. She stops walking. She lies down on a shelf of whorled black basalt (very young, but not from this Season, from the last one probably, her orogeny tells her) and stops moving.

She has a vague sense of time passing, and of herself shrinking inwards, away from the extremities of her own body, detaching from physical sensation. The sun moves across the sky and then disappears. Then it's there again. It gets cold, then hot, then cold again. Maybe if she lies here long enough, she'll calcify, or just sink down into the rock like a stone eater. If rogga really are the children of the Evil Earth, hasn't she served him well? He should take her back. Drag her down through the earth's crust.

Someone's calling her name, and poking at her cheek. It's been going on for a while, but the inflection of the word hasn't changed, the poking has remained at exactly the same patient tempo. She opens her eyes. Someone very strange is leaning over her. Soft-looking, paper white skin. A long mass of black hair. Features that aren't mapping in Sphene's head to any ethnic group she knows of. Very black eyes. A wide smile full of too many teeth.

It takes her a while to come back to her body enough to speak. The person has noticed that she's awake, though, and she starts to play with Sphene's hair, smile widening further. She's very naked.

"Zeiat," Sphene says, a little slurred. "What the fuck?"

"I'm sorry if I was gone long," the stone eater who doesn't look like a stone eater any more says. "I'm not sure, but I think it took me quite a bit of time to learn how to do this! But I did, and I think it has turned out pretty well, don't you?" She looks down at Sphene expectantly. "Now we can go to human places and get you good water!"

Sphene thinks she manages a nod. "We'll." She coughs. "We should probably get ourselves clothes first."

Zeiat takes her hand and pulls her to her feet. She's still so tall. Sphene feels short and weak in front of her. "How the fuck did you do that?" she asks. "Make yourself... human?" She trails off a little, because even though Zeiat now appears to have skin and keratin and real eyes, it still doesn't quite add up to _human_.

"I really don't think I could explain it properly," Zeiat says, smile shifting to a frown.

Sphene shakes her head. It doesn't really matter. "Zeiat," she says, hoping her voice isn't too unsteady, "If you leave again, can you tell me if you're going to come back or not?"

Zeiat's frown shifts back into a grin. It's much smoother now than it was when she was rock, but somehow it's even more unsettling. "Oh," she says, "I can tell you right now that I am always coming back." She pets Sphene's hair again. "Don't worry," she says. "I'm never going to leave you behind."

Sphene feels a shiver run through her. She looks down at her hand. The tip of the ring finger has just begun to turn gray.


End file.
